Fazio looked crestfallen.
“If it’ll make you feel any better,” the inspector continued, “I can tell you that he probably limped. He’d been shot in the leg some time ago.”
“It’s still going to be tough to identify him.”
“Try anyway. Have a look at the disappearance reports, too. Pasquano says the body’d been cruising the seas for at least a month.”
“I’ll try,” said Fazio, unconvinced.
“I’m going out. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”
He headed straight for the port, stopped the car, got out, and walked towards a wharf where two fishing boats were moored, the rest having already gone out to sea some time before. Luckily, the
“Ciccio!”
“Is that you, Inspector? I’ll be right down.”
They’d known each other a long time and were fond of one another. Albanese was a brine-bitten sixty-year-old who’d been working on fishing boats since the age of six and who people said had no peer when it came to knowing the sea between Vigata and Malta and all the way to Tunisia. He could find mistakes in nautical charts and navigation manuals. It was whispered about town that when work was scarce, he wasn’t above smuggling cigarettes.
“Is this a good time, Ciccio?”
“Absolutely, Inspector. For you, I’m always available.”
Montalbano explained what he wanted from him. Albanese limited himself to asking how much time it would take, and the inspector told him.
“I’ll be back in a couple of hours, boys.”
He followed behind Montalbano, who was heading towards his car. They rode in silence. The guard at the morgue told the inspector that Dr. Mistretta wasn’t in yet; only Jacopello, his assistant, was there. Montalbano felt relieved. Meeting with Mistretta would have ruined the rest of his day. Jacopello was quite loyal to Pasquano, and his face lit up when he saw the inspector.
“Good to see you!”
With Jacopello, the inspector knew he could lay his cards on the table.
“This is my friend, Ciccio Albanese. He’s a man of the sea. If Mistretta’d been here, we’d have told him my friend wanted to see the body, fearing it might be one of his deck hands gone overboard. But there’s no need to playact with you. If Mistretta asks you any questions when he comes in, you know what to answer. Right?”
“Right. Follow me.”
The corpse, in the meantime, had grown even paler. It looked like a skeleton with an onionskin laid over it and bits of flesh randomly attached here and there. As Albanese was examining it, Montalbano asked Jacopello:
“Do you know how Dr. Pasquano thinks this poor bastard was killed?”
“Of course. I was there for the discussion. Mistretta’s wrong. See for yourself.”
The deep, circular grooves around the wrists and ankles had, moreover, turned greyish in color.
“Jacope, think you could persuade Mistretta to order that test Pasquano wanted done on the tissues?”
Jacopello laughed.
“Want to bet I can?”
“Make a bet with you? Never.”
Jacopello was a well-known betting enthusiast. He made bets with everyone on everything from the weather forecast to how many people would die of natural causes over the course of a week, and he rarely lost.
“I’ll think up some reason to convince him that we’re better off having that analysis done. How are we going to look if Inspector Montalbano later discovers that the guy didn’t die by accident, but was murdered? Mistretta will sacrifice his ass if he has to, but he doesn’t like to lose face. But I’m warning you, Inspector, those tests take a long time.”
Only during the drive back did Albanese decide to emerge from his silence.
“Bah,” he managed to mutter.
“What?” the inspector said in vexation. “You look at a dead body for half an hour and all you can say is ‘bah’?”
“It’s all very strange,” said Albanese. “And I’ve certainly seen my share of drowning victims. But this one . . . ,” he interrupted himself to follow another thought: “How long did the doctor say he’d been in the water?”
“A good month.”
“No, Inspector. Two good months, at least.”
“But after two months in the water, there wouldn’t have been any body left, just pieces here and there.”
“That’s what’s so strange about it.”
“Explain, Ciccio.”
“The fact is that I don’t like to talk bullshit.”
